Far and Close Epidemics; Plague under Pyramids and in Rural Hut in the 16th Century – Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł’s Peregrination to the Holy Land and Victoria deorum of Sebastian Fabian Klonowic – Description Convention in the Background of Classic Literature

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present outlook specificity to the topic of epidemics process described in two works Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł’s Peregrination to the Holy Land and Victoria deorum of Sebastian Fabian Klonowic on the background of Thucydides, Lucretius, Ovid and Boccacio. As the contexts are summoned relations of Homer and Virgil. Elements creating convention are following: description of symptoms, treatment attempts, medics’ hopelessness, mass death of population, consequences of social stratification during the plague, an increase of religious worship or escape into hedonistic use of life, loosening moral principles, population migrations, families’ fall, lack of respect for bodies and mass burials. Radziwiłł describes, from a distant perspective, a several-year dynamics of the epidemic’s development largely omitting conventions, Klonowic focuses on its process among the poorer classes, only partially taking up well known plots. Referring to literary tradition, he introduces new ones.